What can you see in the above image? You can see Xfire supporting Web Cameras!

This is the new big thing in Xfire 1.117, the ability to see your web cam in game and also broadcast your web cam live with the live video so that people looking at your live video broadcast can also see your funny facial expressions when you get owned in the games...

Note that since the live video broadcasts are watched in the Xfire website, you cannot really test this in its entirety yet, since the website has yet to be updated to support it. But if you want to test if Xfire can work with your camera, go ahead and give the beta a try and post your feedback in Xfire 1.117 Beta Client Forum.

In a nutshell, this is what you are to do:

1. Download and install the new beta version from Xfire Beta Testing Team news post
   
2. Go to Tools -> Options -> Broadcast (BETA)
   
3. Select your Web Cam there
   
4. Launch a game where full Xfire In-Game features are supported
   
5. Go to Edit Mode (Scroll Lock + E by default) and enable Web Cam overlay

And now you wonder why you would want to look at your own face while playing.


See the full beta release notes at xfbt forums.

Joonas

Continuing the Xfire Options series, today the subject is options related to file transfers. This seems to be a recurring problem area, so I hope that this post will clarify the options that are available for users and how they work,


These options start with File Transfer Rates. Here you can control how much bandwidth Xfire is allowed to use for the file transfer system in different situations. You are able to select the Download rate for three different situations and the upload rate is adjusted automatically depending on your selection for the download rate.

The first situation is Playing a game. This is the effective setting whenever Xfire sees you playing a supported game. If you play online, it is generally advisable to have this one Disabled so that Xfire will not use any bandwidth for file transfers, minimizing the lag it would cause to the game.

The second situation is At my computer. This is the effective setting when you are not playing any games but you are using your computer otherwise. Personally I would recommend having some value other than Disabled here so that you will be able to get files when you use your computer. But it always depends on your Internet connection and personal preference what this should be set to.


The third situation is Idle/AFK. This is the effective setting when no game is running and you have not touched either keyboard or mouse for a while. The Idle detection shares the AFK status timer from "Privacy" tab. For example if the AFK timer is set to 3 minutes, Xfire will start using the rates set here if you do not do anything on your computer for three minutes. Of course, once you press any key or move the mouse, Xfire will fall back to "At my computer" setting.

The most common problems that people have with the file transfer rates are:

• Games lagging because "Playing a game" setting does not have Disabled value and the network connection is limited.
  
• Files to be downloaded show Disabled by user settings. This happens if you...

Event Update! Two new events are going on and we want to make sure you all know about them.



First off, Pro Nights are Back! We're kicking this first one off with A.V.A., the FPS game from Ijji.com and Team Pandemic!



www.xfire.com/cms/xf_ava

Head to the page to find out how you can chat, play and win with the pros. It's going to be an awesome night!

Here's the full schedule:

All Times PDT (GMT-8 ):

3:00pm to 4:00pm - Live chat with pros + AVA

4:00pm to 5:00pm - Deathmatch with pros

5:00pm to 6:00pm - Deathmatch with pros + Live Broadcast

6:00pm to 7:00pm - Escort Missions

Did I mention that you could win gaming gear that expensive headsets, flat screen monitors, peripherals, and in game cash?



Also going on now is a Play 2 Win with the arcade style MMO from Nexon, Dungeon Fighter! You know you miss the days of pumping quarter after quarter into a machine just to get another "man" and keep going...*endearing sigh* well now you can keep doing that without wasting the money.

AAAANNNNNDdd.... One lucky user that i'm totally jealous of is going to win an Alienware Aurora Desktop PC

Yesterday the Xfire website was updated. Since the forums are quite likely the part of the site where people spend most of their time, this change could be considered one of the most influential Xfire website updates to the date.

The new forums are now accessible with this URL: http://www.xfire.com/forums/
(previously the forum index was behind such cryptic an address as http://www.xfire.com/xf/modules.php?name=Forums&file=index)

It has long been in plans to update the forums from the phpBB 2 system that's been in use since the beginning. As the forums grew and more people posted there, various issues started appearing caused by the limitations and bugs of the forum software (SQL errors anyone?).

Initially the new forums were implemented to Xfire Clans & Guilds (now Xfire Communities) and they were being tested and developed there. As is the Xfire trend, the new features are first brought up in small scale, out of direct publicity, to let people play with them and to make the features work better before pushing them out in large scale. This has been true for the Xfire Communities, blogs, advanced Xfire In-Game, video recording, Live Video broadcasting, web game detection, other instant messenger protocol support, and so on.

This same method was also true for the forum software. After the majority of the big bugs were fixed and the forum software built from ground up was feature complete enough, it was now brought up from just the limited test of communities to be the main forum system of the whole Xfire website.



The new forums built from scratch are still not completely free of problems, but now that all the population will use them, the rest of the bugs will be found very quickly and with great probability will also be the focus of web development for a while. At least one important feature that didn't correctly work in the old forums now works very well. This, my friends, is the feature overlooked by many people. It's called SEARCH.

Aside from the forums, another easily...

With the Xfire events keeping the marketing dept. busy, so does the new Xfire update keep the engineering dept. busy too. And looking at the change log for Xfire 1.116 it looks like the developers have been busy in the past few weeks.

As you could guess from the beta release, the Live Video feature has been improved again, this time the changes are aimed mostly towards performance. Although according to forum reports there are still remaining issues with this beta feature for some people.

Xfire has been supporting some web browser based games through it's Xfire XO toolbar. Now the toolbar can be installed with the main application as well instead of needing a separate download. This is not automatically distributed with the Xfire updater, though, but is part of the full installer available from http://www.xfire.com/download/

As always, there are some bug fixes (there are no truly bug free programs, are there?). According to the release notes, these bug fixes include things such as fixing older games hanging, icons not displaying correctly under Windows Vista and voice chat bugs.

See the full change log to find out all the data published of this new version.

Joonas

From Video Capture Contests to Play 2 Win events, this is a busy week at Xfire!



Today marks the launch of the Dungeons and Dragons: Online Play 2 Win event and on Tuesday, the Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Video Capture Contest draws to an end.

The DDO campaign runs now through November 2nd with plenty of prizes at stake: Intel Core i7 gaming rigs, Radeon graphics cards, Samsung widescreen monitors, DDO Store points and more! To win all you have to do is play DDO as much as possible!

For more information check out the Event Page!




On the Dragon Rising front, it’s not too late to vote and win prizes! With over 250 entries thus far, we’ve had quite an outpouring of video submissions. To reward the OFP community, we’ve decided offer more prizes, inviting you to upload any Operation Flashpoint video for a chance to win. For all videos tagged, “ofplastchance” between October 16th and October 20th, you’ll be eligible to win one of two Arctosa Keyboards with Deathadder mice. Please note that entry in this category is separate from the three existing categories, but entry in one does not exclude you from the others.

For more information about the video capture contest visit the Event Page!

To continue the "Xfire Options" series, this week you will have an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the Sound options of Xfire. In this context the Sound options mean options for event sounds such as receiving messages and knowing when friends log on. Options for voice chat and video recording will be later.



The first option is Send or receive a message. When this is enabled, you will hear a sound whenever someone sends you an instant message or when you send a message to someone. This option is for out-of-game situations.

The second option Receive a message while gaming controls whether you hear a sound for incoming messages while playing games. This sound is also different to that of the out-of-game message indicator.

The third option is Friend logs on or off. As you might guess from the label, enabling this option will make Xfire play a sound whenever any of your friends log on or go offline.

Next up is Someone joins or leaves a chat room. Enabling this option makes Xfire play a sound effect whenever someone joins or leaves a chat room (obviously). In large chat rooms this option along with the "Send or receive a message" will create quite the orchestral performance of sound effects so you might want to turn them off if you take part of such chat rooms.

Next up you will find the option Send or receive voice chat requests. Enabling this makes Xfire play a dialing tune or ringing sound (or whatever sound effects the selected sound pack has) when you try to call your friend or when you receive a voice chat call.

The last toggleable option is Take a screenshot while gaming. Enabling this makes Xfire play some kind of camera shutter sound when you take screenshots so you know that the screenshot was taken.

All of the above options are saved in your Xfire user profile, so they are retained across systems as long as you log in with the same Xfire username. They are all enabled when you create the Xfire account but can then be disabled and enabled by will from...

Ladies and gentlemen (and not so gentle men too), I have the pleasure to announce that the next version of the Xfire program has entered into open beta testing.

The Xfire 1.116 beta does not bring many visible changes since this time the work has been directed to the foundation of the client: the skinning engine is undergoing a major overhaul.

If you are one of the people who prefer using other skins than the official Shadow one, then it would be greatly appreciated to get you to test the beta and find out if your skin still works the same it has been in previous versions.

I have seen that lately the little part of Xfire community that has been creating custom skins for the Xfire client has pretty much vanished. I hope these changes that have effect on the skinning system will make it closer and easier for users to make their own skins so that this valuable user contribution type gets back on its feet.

According to the 1.116 Beta Notes also the live broadcast feature has once again received improvements. What those improvements specifically are, that's not told and I don't know them either. Rest assured, the engineering team is working on things based on the bug reports from users having problems with the system.


As always, to get your hands on the beta, go to the Official Xfire Beta Testing Team page. If you haven't already, use your chance to also join to the team; it is an unlimited official team so membership in it does not count towards the 5 community limit and does not include hundreds of random people to your contact list.

Joonas

Now with more exclamation points!



If you haven't been living under a rock, then you MUST be aware that Xfire just launched a Games Store.

You knew that right? Of course you did, you smart gamer, you.

But just to inform those poor souls who didn't, Xfire has launched a Game Store!



That's right, all of the FPS, RTS, RPG, Action-Adventure favorites right at your downloading fingertips. It's still in Alpha stage, so we encourage your opinion!

Want to be up on all of the latest release dates, discounts, and offers? Join the Official Xfire Store Community and stay informed! http://www.xfire.com/communities/officialstore/




Ready to buy games? Here's how!

1. Go to www.xfirestore.com
2. Use the same login as Xfire.com to login to the store.
3. Make sure the email address that you see is your email address (This is very important)
4. Browse games by Genre - You can sort by price or title.
5. Find a game you want to buy
6. If you click the title, you can see screenshots, videos (if they're available) and more information about the game.
7. Click "Add to Cart" if you're buying more than one game or "Download" if you're just buying the one.
8. You will be taken to the check out screen that shows you your purchases.
9. Enter your credit card or secure Paypal information.
10. After purchasing the game you will be taken to a page providing download links and activation codes.

Now Simply Download and Play! The game is all yours!


Note: YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE XFIRE RUNNING TO PLAY YOUR GAMES. There is no forced software. After your games are installed, unless they have an online component you are not required to be online to play.

Now that the new Xfire release has become an integral part of our daily life, it's time to continue the look at Xfire's options dialog. This time I'll show you the settings found from Chat tab:



The first section here is Messages which controls the general settings regarding sending and receiving messages.

The first option is Show time stamp in chat window. When this is enabled you can see the time next to each message you send and receive in Xfire. The effect of this setting is clearly seen in this little screenshot part I took of me chatting with myself:


The next option you can select is Create incoming chat windows minimized. This setting is effective when someone sends you a message and you do not already have a chat window open for that person. If this is not enabled, then the chat window will pop in front of you; if this is enabled, then the chat window will be created minimized and the only sign of a new message will be a flashing titlebar button (unless you have sounds enabled).

The third option is Enable chat logging which as it says, enabled all chat you do to be logged so that you can later view what you were discussing with other people. The chat logs are saved as text files under %appdata%\Xfire\chatlog but can probably easier be accessed by right clicking your friend's name and selecting "View chat log" from the context menu.

Remember that you cannot magically make chat logs available of chats you had when this option was not enabled. Unless you have a very slow hard drive or little free space, I would recommend enabling this option. You might need to see your former chats at some point. And you can always clear the chat logs yourself if the need arises.


The next part is Xfire In-Game. Here you can select whether the Xfire In-Game system is available at all or not. Typically you want to leave the Enable Xfire In-Game option enabled since the best part of Xfire is that you can use it while playing games. (not supported in all games)

You can also customize the...